may very well be that poetry is the art most apt to express our northern race. It may be that in this invisible art of poetry the hidden force and impact and delicate dreams of our life can most completely express themselves. Perhaps poetry is the art most able to express our diffused passion and tenderness. Perhaps the greatness of Italian living is best said in painting or acting or music or cities; and the greatness of Anglo-Saxon living in poetry. And perhaps not. What if after all, I thought, as I sat there in the town of the Villa d'Este, the art of poetry in Italy and that in England should be like these two walks? What if, in this unseen region that poetry is of our own selves and of the Italians, we jump too easily at superior conclusions? What if we have assumed too much? I wondered.

STARK YOUNG.

A LIVING THEATRE

BY THOMAS MOULT

I

THE history of the theatre, since its far-away beginnings when choruses were sung in circular dancing places to the glory of the Greek gods, has been the history of a great encounter. The aristocracy of emotion, intellect, and imagination expressed through the drama is confronted by the democracy of a normal intelligence, an average, half-developed sensibility, expressing itself as the audience. The playhouse is the ground of their common meeting. The dramatist employs with great reluctance the theatrical symbols by which his vision may be interpreted for the popular understanding. By the time the encounter is suspended, if the dramatist's purpose be true, the purpose of art, he will have resisted with much stubbornness any undue emphasis or materialization of his particular form of symbolism, which is of necessity super-imposed upon the literary symbolism which has been used during the process of artistic creation, the symbolism of words.

In the fact that for the full satisfaction of his creative impulse the dramatist must descend to that encounter in the playhouse, lies the difference between the drama and all other forms of art except music. In poetry or painting the symbolism ends with the last stroke of the pen or brush; the audience is only a human detail. Often the poet or the painter has no audience at all, yet he goes on writing verses or making pictures. One admits, of course, that the great music-composer whom we personally prefer to regard as the greatest composer who has ever lived might conceivably be claimed as a candidate for the title had his compositions never been played at all. Whichever of the great dramatists we prefer personally to believe is the greatest dramatist who has ever lived might still be claimed as a candidate for the title

had his dramas never been acted. Great drama, as a host of authorities have informed us, is great drama whether it is acted or not; it speaks, they say, with the same voice in solitude as in crowds. One admits this, and yet, with all diffidence, qualifies it. The dramatist has every right, if he so wishes, to regard the audience as a human detail, not as an artistic detail. He has every right, if he wishes, to rely upon the effect which a reading of his drama has upon the imagination of the average cultured man. By doing so he avoids the heat and compromise that inevitably take place whenever a representation is given on the stage. The aristocracy of emotion, intellect, and imagination remains, in his case, uncompromised. And yet by standing aloof the dramatist is in peril of being likened to a hoarder of his loose jewel who misses the substantial and appropriate setting which might fittingly have brought out its radiance.

It is possible that in the history of the theatre there have been periods when no setting would be worthy of the jewel, when no encounter was tolerable. But if the drama is created during, say, the period one fervently trusts we are now about to enter upon, the dramatist must choose between the most strikingly obvious alternatives. Either he will place his faith in the vagrant imagination which the average cultured reader brings to his printed text, or he will place it in the combined theatrical imaginations of those whose idealism made possible the International Theatre Exhibition of 1922-of Mr. Gordon Craig and M. Adolphe Appia, Madame Eleanora Duse and, perhaps, Sir John Martin Harvey, plus all the other workers in the playhouse operating in combination upon that particular dramatic creation as a theatrical production. If, believing that the drama is independent of the theatre, he relies entirely on the reader of the printed text, he is to be envied for the possession of an æsthetic nature so easily satisfied. Certainly he is finding his satisfaction in a far readier fashion than was his great forerunner, William Shakespeare. For Shakespeare was wont to rely upon the combined theatrical imaginations of his day more than seems to have been acknowledged. The variations of text in the different folios tempt one to believe (however little one's belief may be based on actual fact) that in Shakespeare's lodgings-dare we say?-above

the French hairdresser's shop at the corner of Silver Street and Mountjoy Street in London city (while, incidentally, confronting him whenever he lifted his eyes from the manuscript was a churchyard of which a corner still exists), the man from Stratford made the first drafts, the first drafts only, of the plays written between 1598 and 1604. A careful reading of the plays, as modernist commentators are now emphasizing, leads to the conviction that their completion was not reached while Shakespeare remained in his study.

We see him issuing forth, the manuscript in his possession, from Christopher Mountjoy's shop, winding his way along the tortuous byways into Cheapside. We see him crossing that historic thoroughfare in the direction of the river, and, avoiding for once the Mermaid Tavern, which is directly in his path, eventually arriving at one of the Thames-side wharves. We see him chartering a boat to the Globe Theatre on Bankside, opposite to his starting-place. We see him in the company of the manager of the theatre and the actors. Being men of much native excellence, especially at improvization (someone has well said that they were the predecessors of our own best music-hall comedians), these people of the Elizabethan stage add and subtract, at rehearsal and during performances, until the play has grown to something like reasonable perfection. Then, finally, we see Shakespeare receiving the manuscript back into his own charge, with its corrections, additions, and cuts, made (as we might find if only we could do what several centuries of people have vainly sighed for-that is, get a peep at them) in several handwritings. And, once again returning to the solitude of his lodgings opposite St. Olave's churchyard, he polishes and repolishes the text until the whole play reads as we have it in the early folios to this day.

II

Thus, alongside our dramatist who, by writing merely for the reader, is content to remain above the battle of the theatre, we are able to set at least one considerable dramatist who did not seek to avoid the rough-and-ready encounter with the democracy that is the audience of a normal intelligence, an average, half

developed sensibility. And Shakespeare, admittedly, was a giant among the nobility of emotion, intellect, and imagination. If we were to pursue an investigation among other dramatists of unchallengeable worth, we would most likely find that they were generally of the same mind as he. They entered the theatrical arena zestfully, on every possible occasion. And whenever such a dramatist has evoked from his audience a fitting and noble reaction, he has achieved the greatest triumph to which he can aspire. For when the drama triumphs, a masterpiece like Hamlet comes to life. The triumph may be said to have something of compromise in it, if for an aristocracy to acknowledge that the democracy has any rights whatsoever is a compromise! But the triumphant dramatist's compromise is always on the honorable side. His dramatic vision is not cheapened, the expression of that vision is adapted as slightly as needs be to produce an exalted response from the democracy. The dramatist has resisted with much stubbornness what in the theatre might be an undue emphasis on the additional symbolism invented to convey his meaning. He has prevented any belittlement or misinterpretation of his purpose at the hands of others.

But there are times, one may say many, many times, when the dramatist does not triumph. There is a kind of compromise in which the dramatic vision is cheapened, a compromise which results in a play of the type of, say, Herr Sudermann's. When the encounter ends in the actual defeat of the dramatist, with democracy merely exhibiting itself as an applauding, gesticulating mob, encouraged and abetted by a gang of shoddy-minded craftsmen, the result is The Way of an Eagle or The Sign of the Cross.

The International Theatre Exhibition is a declaration by theatrical craftsmen of many lands that there is no longer any necessity during the great encounter for the humiliation of the aristocratic spirit of drama, nor for the descent to shoddy-mindedness of the servants in the playhouse, no necessity for any degradation of the audience. Give into our care the workings of the playhouse, they have said in effect, and we guarantee that the encounter between the aristocracy of the dramatist and the democracy of his audience shall be ennobled: that is, the lofty